Ola to Porto!

Ola!

Up this morning about 7:30 am to our last morning in Coimbra. While the hotel is clean, comfortable and quiet, their breakfasts definitely leave something to be desired. However, we did what we could (although I don’t think I can even remember the last time I had canned peaches in syrup!) Then gathered up our ever-increasing load of papers, bottles and etc. and headed out of town toward Porto.

Loved the bas-relief on the theatre!

San Idelfonso Church

Old wooden trolley!

Our lovely non-bizarre hotel room, 404

Sooooo much better than Lisboa!

Se (Cathedral)

Plain front, but lovely inside!

Corner of the cloister

Lots of blue and white tiles

Main altar

In the Treasury

More Cathedral

Boat heading down the Douro

Tram we took back to hotel

Excellent wine!

Scrambled eggs and veggies; ox tail meat ball

My chicken with potato puree

Robert's Bonino

Our two free glasses of port!

R's charbroiled pineapple and sorbet

My green tea ice cream and I don't know what!

 

Again, as it’s only something like 100 km we decided to take the local roads, which were excellent.  In fact, when we were about half-an-hour away from Porto, we decided to stop at a local McDonald’s for rest stop and cokes. Turns out, it’s a very odd McDonald’s! You drive up a ramp for the McDrive (their car service) and that’s it – their very own parking lot is actually underneath the building!  Never saw such a thing for McDonald’s before, and believe me, I have surveyed McDonald’s for years and years!  So, we had to go once all the way around, and then into the underground parking area, and then walk up the stairs to get to the store!  It certainly wasn’t a hassle or anything, but I just thought it was very odd!  (And also, I tend to be pretty picky about where we park the car and for how long when it is loaded up with luggage.  Years ago, our friend Joan Mold told us about how their car had been broken into in Spain when they were having lunch, and the thieves apparently made off with all their dirty laundry!)  At any rate, I try not to stop for sightseeing if we have the car full – rather, like on Sunday, we drove into Coimbra, dropped the luggage at the hotel, then went back 9 km out of town to the Roman ruin site.  

At any rate, a perfectly presentable McDonald’s, and I had no cause for worry … but we did pick up sandwiches and fries and ate there as it was almost noon.  (Note here:  While I always get a Big Mac, Robert tends to try new things.  Today was something called a Texasburger.  It was huge, and included - besides the bacon, onion and tomato - tortilla chips! Whew!  Glad I didn’t order that!)

From McDonald’s, we headed straight into Porto, which we are finding is a very interesting city!  It is definitely a bit rough around the edges – our hotel is in the center of town, and there are some homeless people more or less living right in the area near a deserted theatre front down the block.  But Robert guided me straight into the NH Hotel Porto Batalha, where we will be for the next three nights.  (Note: I did have to get to the front of the hotel, and ended up going up and over the sidewalk, but nobody seemed to mind, and it accomplished the purpose, so I suppose it was all right!)  Robert went into the hotel to get help and find parking, and came out a few minutes later saying we needed to unload the car! So, everything came out, and I basically just locked up the car and left it there to be attended to.  Turns out when we left the hotel a few minutes later, it had disappeared, so I am hopeful we will see it again one day.

Our room (404) wasn’t yet ready, but was promised in about 45 minutes to an hour, so first we went out to find cash.  What it specifically says in one of my Portugal guide books is that the withdrawal limit from an ATM on any account is 200€!  I had highlighted the sentence in yellow at some time or other, but definitely forgot about it when we wanted to get money in Lisboa the other day.  As we get bank charges (not foreign transaction fees) for each withdrawal, we usually wait and take out about 400€at a time.  Why Portugal does this, I have no idea, because I am told you can use your card twice to take out the 400€, just not at once?!  Makes absolutely no sense to me, but whoever listens to me?! So, we got our 200€ across the street, and then came back to the hotel to wait in the lobby.  Of course, it took a bit longer than expected to get into our room, about an hour and a half, but that was fine.  

We were finally allowed to go to our room, and truly, the wait was well worth it!  I had discovered the NH hotel chain on our first trip to Spain some years ago, and always liked it.  They have some lovely, individually styled hotels, but nothing, I repeat NOTHING like what we had in Lisboa!  (Yes, I am still pissed.)  At any rate, we have a lovely balcony and two sets of French doors, and lots of room to put things!  There is great WiFi, lovely fluffy towels, and (unfortunately) some things that interest me in the minibar!  Oh well!! Robert got the computer set up, and I arranged all our possessions – so nice to have actual closet space to put things in!  In Hotel Oslo, we had the third bed in the room to use, but it always looks so messy! I often wonder what people do with their things when there are actually three people in the room!  I’m sure they couldn’t all be up and moving at the same time!

Finally, we headed out about 3 pm to see some of the city.  Well…I really wasn’t too impressed with Lisboa, although I enjoyed our time there.  However, my list of things to do and see here in Porto was much longer – including what and how to taste Port! There are three older trolley’s that go on basically tourist-y routes, and I think we will probably take one of those tomorrow at some point.  For now, we headed down the hill and then up again to get to the Se (Cathedral).

Stunning church; beautifully decorated (lots and lots and lots of gold…) with a bit of beautiful stained glass and some wonderful side chapels.  The treasury was also open, and boy – the size of some of those emeralds and rubies … and again, lots of gold cloth and thread.  From the Cathedral, we found our way 58 m to the official Tourist Office and went in to look around.

Very nice young man was very helpful.  So tomorrow, we have the following already planned:

We are going to ride the trolley early (naturally) and be at the Port Museum at 10 am when it opens.  From there, we plan on heading down to the river to do the hour-long 6 bridges cruise on the Douro. (One of those bridges is by Gustave Eiffel, and a second, very similar, by one of his students!)  This also apparently includes a glass of port!  Wheeee! Then, in the afternoon at 3:15 pm we are booked at J.W. Bermester for their English tour and deluxe tasting (3 ports + chocolate!)  (I really only wanted to do the two tastes, but once Robert heard about the chocolate, of course we had to splurge…LOL)

We will still have room for a few other activities, and to decide what other port “lodges” (that’s what they are apparently called!) to visit on Thursday.  I’m exhausted all ready!

After all this excitement, we decided to walk over the Pont Luis I (a bridge for pedestrians and the metro line) to the other side, just to see what we could see.  Which was fine until I looked down and could actually SEE all the way down to the river! And we were REALLY high up!  (The Douro River has cut a pretty deep gorge here.)  That definitely got my heart rate up, I can tell you!  Robert, of course, has no such problems, and continued taking photos right and left (literally) on both sides of the bridge! The bridge was also carrying Porto’s modern trams back and forth, so we decided to stop and get tickets.  Helpful young man explained how to pay the 0.60€to get your renewable card, so now we not only each have a card, but we can each take five trips on public transportation! What fun!

So, we caught the tram back across the bridge, which dropped us off at the Sao Bento train station.  From there it was (of course!) uphill to Sao Idelfonso church, which is on the same square as our hotel, stopping to pick up a couple of bottles of water along the way, and now we are getting ready to head out for dinner!

Have to admit that I am really taken with Porto, and we are both looking forward to doing a lot of exploring these next couple of days!  So, back with a report on dinner soon!

m

xxx

Dinner … well … we found a small place fairly close to the hotel, but honestly, as we were heading there, we found the area to be a bit too sketchy for comfort.  (As I told R, I don’t mind being a bit risky, but I do rather object to being in a downright dangerous neighborhood.)  So, we switched plans and came back to the hotel, to have dinner in Tabu, their lovely restaurant.  It does so happen that we were gifted with a coupon for a free bottle of wine with dinner tonight, as well as two free coupons for glasses of port.  So, for dinner, Rordered the Bonito appetizer, and I ordered the chicken breast as my entrée.  It came first with a starter of scrambled eggs and vegetables as well as an ox-tail croquette.  Finally, for dessert, R had toasted pineapple with coconut ice cream.  I had green tea ice cream and something else totally unidentifiable but good.  Back upstairs by 9:06 pm and I’m writing this quickly as I am falling asleep as I type!

More tomorrow!

m

xxx